Samples. Do you ever buy from them?

Thinking aloud last night when I reached for the Floris Santal, 'I only bought this after receiving a small sample bottle'. It is likewise with my love for ADP.

Has anyone else been influenced by a sample? It is just that I always thought they were a farcical gimmick until I realised they do help make choices.

Definitely. I wasted hundreds of pounds on EDTs which I bought blind before now. Now I will only ever buy after sampling - why throw your money away?

Having said this, I've bought a few soaps and creams blind and have fallen into the buyer's remorse trap a few times since starting DE shaving - in part because samples are largely unobtainable.

I rarely go to shopping centres or towns, but if I do I will usually go into the department stores to check out what fragrance samples they currently have (they usually have drawers full of whatever is being pushed currently) and take a few away. These are 100% of the time terrible fragrances!

Like buddha above I sample the mass market one's at department stores, most are awful but there's the odd gem. The only frag samples I've ordered were Floris No.89 & Penhaligon's Hammam Bouquet simply because I couldn't try them locally. I find Floris' 1.2ml sample for £2.50 to be the sweet spot, some companies want £5 for 3ml which is defeating the purpose of a sample IMO.

Soap samples on the other hand I used to buy quite often but came to realise that performance is very rarely indicative of the full product, their only real use is for sampling the scents.